Hollywood's Best Alien Movies

Hollywood's Best Alien Movies

It is a question that baffles modern science and beguiles the general public: Does life exist on other planets?

Hollywood, for one, has already weighed in on the issue, with a clear verdict: Aliens exist. And they might just be coming for us!

The science fiction genre has played host to our wildest speculation about the possibility of alien life. And the trend continues with this week's release, Predators.

Starring Adrien Brody and a host of beefed-up actors, the film follows a group of people who wake up on a strange planet, only to find themselves being hunted by a ruthless alien race known as Predators.

Here's a good time then, to look back at some of Hollywood's previous popular alien movies.

Predator

We've seen Predators before, of course. This is fifth film in the Predator series, after Predator (1987) and Predator 2 (1990), and crossover films Alien vs Predator (2004) and Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007).

Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in the original film, Predator, which followed a team of elite US Army soldiers through the jungles of Central America as they battled the Predator, a kind of extraterrestrial hunter.

Predator 2, released three years later in an attempt to capitalise on the first film's success, met with negative reviews and unimpressive box office returns.

While not as critically acclaimed as other films in the genre, Predators has still made its mark, with an impressive five titles bearing its name.

ET

If the previously mentioned films show how Hollywood portrays aliens as foe, E T the Extra-Terrestrial showed how aliens could be our friends.

The 1982 classic, co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, told the story of Elliott, a lonely boy who befriends a kind alien creature, who's stuck on Earth. Elliot has to help ET get home -- hence the famous line, "ET...phone home..." -- without either his mom or the US government finding out what he's up to.

In addition to being one of the most commercially successful movies of all time, at the 55th Academy Awards the film was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture.

Interestingly, it was Richard Attenborough's bio-pic on Mahatma Gandhi that won the award.

Signs

Indian-American filmmaker M Night Shyamalan has long been comfortable with the strange and unexplainable.

It was no huge surprise, then, when The Sixth Sense director chose to take on the topic of alien invasion in Signs (2002).

Starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, the film follows a former priest (Gibson) and his efforts to protect his family from what he views as an imminent alien invasion, forecast by the growing number of distinct 'crop circles' showing up all over the world.